He’s been called the most powerful lobbyist in President Trump’s Washington. Brian Ballard, the president of D.C.- and Florida-based Ballard Partners, was a top Florida fundraiser for the last three Republican presidential candidates, including Trump, and has aided the rise of several GOP governors in the state. One of Ballard’s top lieutenants, Susie Wiles, even ran Trump’s campaign in Florida, helping deliver one of the nation’s biggest swing states.
Ballard, 58, one of six children raised by a single mother and a double graduate of the University of Florida, recently spoke with the Washington Examiner about being a top lobbyist and doing business in the Trump era. A lightly edited transcript follows.
Washington Examiner: What makes your lobbying firm’s strategy unique? Don’t most firms have a mixture of government experience and political acumen?
Brian Ballard: I don’t think the level of competence — I’m not criticizing other firms here — our level of competence in our personnel in Florida and here and what our clients retain us for, how they refer other clients to us [is different]. Our biggest growth has been client referral of other clients. So, I’ll give you an example, for instance: Dish referred us to MGM, who referred us to H&R Block, who referred us to another client. So, you just do those lines of demarcation. That’s how we’ve grown, and again, you know, we’re active politically. I mean, Robert Wexler is active. [Jamie Rubin’s] active; [Pam Bondi’s] active; I’m active. But it’s more about the ability to solve problems than it is who’s in power at certain time. I mean, obviously, it’s helpful to be on the team that’s in power, but it’s more helpful to be competent in your job. …
Washington Examiner: Are there any specific areas or issues or policies that you’ve had disagreements with the president on and have vocalized them?
Ballard: Who am I? No one elected me to anything. I don’t feel it’s my duty or job to vocalize my opinions [to the president]. The guy just gets — the level of partisanship and criticism is just not fair. And listen, I think we’re a bipartisan firm. I was a John McCain guy. And when Barack Obama got elected, I saluted him. He’s our president, go forward, do good things. It was such an important symbolic win if nothing else. And I always praised President Obama as being a great dad and a great role model. I didn’t agree with his policies, still don’t. But I thought he’s a good man. And I think President Trump doesn’t get that same level of courtesy, which is what I take issue with.
Washington Examiner: Regarding the Trump Hotel and your clients, political leaders staying there, there’s a sense that [Trump] will feel good and his ego will kind of be stoked if they stay at his hotel. There have been reports about how that’s an attempt to curry favor. What are your thoughts on those who use the Trump properties to gain favor and the implications behind that?
Ballard: I think that is the biggest load of crap that I’ve heard since I’ve been here. The whole stuff about the hotel and all the rest is the most silly and not real. And these people you talk about list my clients all the time, and it’s ridiculous. It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard; first of all, I’ve never advised a client on where to stay since I’ve been here. And half the time, I don’t know where they stay. Ninety percent of the time, I go, “Hey, what hotel are you in?” So to me, it is just absurd. If one of the Marriott brothers would have been president, then we would probably have the same discussion about people staying in a Marriott. I think it’s the most ridiculous criticism of Trump of all the ridiculous criticisms that I’ve seen.
Washington Examiner: I know one of your clients has been GEO, the private prison contractor. They got $110 million to build an immigration center in Texas and now a new one in Florida. What are your thoughts given all the complaints and problems at private prisons in America? And recently, all the major banks have said that 100% of them will not be banking partners with private prisons like GEO.
Ballard: GEO is a Florida company. I’ve known the players in GEO for a long time, and I’m proud to represent them. I think private prisons, by and large, are better run, better staffed, more humane than public prisons. Come to the Florida state prison system and compare it to GEO. I’ll tell you what, if you’re going to go in there, you’d rather go to a GEO jail facility than you would want to go to one of the state prisons in Florida.
Washington Examiner: Are there any particularly well-known or egregious examples of folks, potential clients, that you’ve said no to?
Ballard: So, you know, the whole China Huawei thing — all of this stuff involved with that, we’ve had about five different iterations of folks trying to get us involved in that and we’ve said no. But I don’t want to say Huawei because they never approached us, but it was other folks associated with that. We had one from a very prominent law firm in town that asked us to represent folks that are imprisoning folks in China, doing all sorts of things to build the matrix of social credibility, your social score. It was HIKVision, but we chose not to even meet with them. And it came from a very prominent law firm.
So, the big risk for us is sometimes you don’t know. You sit down with a very nice guy, and it seems like he’s got a good thing. And turns out he is not a great guy. So we do a lot more due diligence than probably when we started. It’s not like Florida, where I kind of know like the back of my hand what’s going on with folks. This is a world you got to be real careful. And we’re not perfect. We’ve made mistakes. We’ve represented a couple of folks I wish we wouldn’t have. I’m not going to tell you who. But yeah, we’ve made some mistakes. You’ve got to be on your toes.
